Posts Tagged ‘captain america’

Movie Review: Captain America The First Avenger (2011)
Director: Joe Johnston
Cast: Chris Evans, Hugo Weaving, Tommy Lee Jones, Hayley Atwell, Sebastian Stan, Dominic Cooper, Stanley Tucci
Plot: Steve Rogers (Evans) wants to become the best solider possible. There’s just one problem: he’s a 90 pound kid with too many medical conditions to be accepted. However, when Dr. Abraham Erskine (Tucci) sees that he has the drive to be not only a good soldier, but a good man, he puts him into a secret Super Soldier program to create the ultimate soldier. And it works. However, the facility is attacked by the forces of Hydra, lead by a German who is obsessed with all things occult. Turns out this German also went through an earlier (less profected) version of the Super Soldier program and became the Red Skull (Weaving).

Can Steve Rogers defeat the Red Skull and save the world from total destruction?

In a word, this movie is awesome. It’s great to see Johnston behind the camera again, and he brings the fun and adventure of WWII that he brought to the screen with the Rocketeer, and translates a pulp adventure into a cinematic masterpiece. This flick is fun, action packed, and has some great performances. Another testament to the level of quality and entertainment that Marvel Studios are bringing to the cinematic counter-parts of their intellectual properties.

Evans does a great job as Steve Rogers, who as a wholesome character could be very easy to dislike or not identify with. However, Evans performance makes the character both likeable and relateable to the movie-going audience. Weaving does a good job playing a villain, and he does a great job of commanding the makeup once the Red Skull face is revealed. Tommy Lee Jones also steals every scene he’s in, and Hayley Atwell does such a great job of filling the role of the competent career woman and heartthrob.

As with the other Marvel flicks, there’s more of a lead in for the Avengers movie that comes out next year. Unfortunately it makes the ending of this movie more of a transition than an ending. But if you stay after the credits, there’s a teaser trailer for the Avengers flick that’s totally bad ass. But then again, that movie is going to be totally bad ass.

If you want a fun summer adventure flick, you need to go see this movie. Twice.

If you don’t have any desire to see this movie, then you’re a communist spy. Who steals candy from babies. And hates good movies.

The argument in today’s comic is not one that has escaped me. Not that I’m unattractive – quite the opposite, in fact – but the fact that, especially with a photo comic, readers are more inclined to tune in every update if you or one of your main protagonists is an attractive woman.

Many online properties have figured this out, following the learnings garnered from television. People like watching attractive people, and more often than not they prefer women to men.

This was made even more abundantly clear when I have had female characters appear in the photo stories – namely, the sexy vet assistant, the crazy cat lady, or even most recently Amanda and Jess.

Some of the panels I give at conventions includes “The Dos and Don’ts of Photocomics,” and in there I say two things:

1) I recommend against putting yourself in the comic. Not you as an actor, but you as a person.
2) I recommend having some attractive friends be in the comic with you.

The first item up there is important because if, like @$$hole!, your comic has any guts or an opinion, you’re more likely to tick someone off. These readers tend to be ignorant to the entertainment process, and instead directly associate you with the negative aspects of whatever you’ve done or said that angers them. They do this even if you don’t cast yourself as yourself. Audiences have difficulty differentiating the character from the actor. Or they assume that, as the writer, the negative piece must reflect your true thoughts and ideals.

I say this to the later, “If I were to write Captain America, I would write a very patriotic character who put country before himself. However, I also have to write the villains. Say it’s a flashback and he’s fighting Nazis. Just because I write a character who’s a Nazi doesn’t automatically mean I sympathize, endorse, or appreciate that organization in any way. It just means that, if I make you hate that character, I’ve done my job as a writer portraying them as the villain.”

So why, if I know myself to be attractive, do I write self-depreciating humor strips like this? I took a note from Kevin Smith’s book that, when you write something with balls – something with an opinion – it’s better to attack yourself before someone else has the chance to.

Plus, let’s be honest – the bald head is an easy mark for when you need to poke fun at something on my person.